I am not dissatisfied with your answer re. the wood spliced in on the 'tower' harquebus, it seems to me though, there is more to it and some things remain unexplained.
Re. the tubular back sights with a 'peep aperture, I am sure some of these are more modern add-ons, as you state, and crudely done.
I was really meaning the original ones, made and fitted to target arms in the late 1500's and early 1600's
From what I have read, some of these arms turned out surprising degrees of accuracy!.........Much better than military arms made two centuries later!

For instance, at a target shoot in Basel Switzerland in 1605, the targets fired at with smooth-bored targets guns, were about 75cm in diameter, (30")
and the range was 190 yds, or about 170-odd Metres.

For rifled arms, the target was 1 metre (roughly 40") in diameter, and range was 268 yds, or roughly 242 metres!
At this shoot, only cheek-stocks were allowed, with no resting of stock against the shoulder,...and fired off-hand.

Even today, such shooting is above what many can accomplish!

Re. the staked in aperture,
Maybe it would be better to refer to it as replaceable, rather than adjustable?
If it was found to work well, leave it alone, if it didn't, wack it out and try again!.......do you think?

As you have been pressing me (thanks a lot) you will be glad to learn that I have been planning to write a book on my collection and on earliest arsenal firearms and accouterments of ca. 1330-1700 in general, with tons of photos and setting up new, exact and transferable dating criteria - which really would be something never tried by anyone before. 30 years of experience, some 3,000 books and more than 280,000 photos taken in museums all over Europe, including England, and a lot of help from my friends should really suffice to make it a good book. Let's wait and see. A whole lot of work lies before me.

Well Michael, if it has been completed, please tell me how to order one! If not, here is more encouragement, I will make an advance reservation for my copy. I'm certain due to the high cost of putting color photos in hard-copy books, that you would consider an accompanying DVD with the thousands of photos on it. I have seen this done very successfully in a recent book by the Spanish Ministry of Defense on Spanish Naval Cannons. Not only can many more color photos be inserted, but they can be life-sized if desired to maximize detail. The reader has to scroll around to see it all unless they have a room-sized computer screen, but it is certainly worth the effort for large-format original documents, for example.

Location: Bavaria, Germany - the center of 15th and 16th century gunmaking

Posts: 4,310

Here are some finely decorated wrought-iron Italian (Brescia made) barrels from snap-matchlock or snap-tinderlock Landsnecht arquebuses.
The were all wrought three-staged, with a rear and forward stages both heavily swamped and the central stage notable thinner. All of these barrels were of round section throughout.
The complete guns looked quite similar to the one shown at the beginning of this thread.

All of them are iron carved in high relief, against a ground which originally was blackened for contrast. With top quality, the ground was dotted and in some cases gilt.

There is also a large group of contemporary Italian maces known with iron-carved decorated in the same style.

As the walls of these barrels had unusually thick walls they were often re-used over centuries and consequently undergone severel alterations.
These heavily altered barrels often show up at Italian auctions.
E.g., the igniting pans that originally were dove tailed at the right-hand side were removed when the barrels were restocked together with wheellock or flintlock machanisms.

Originally, all these short and stout barrels barrels had a relatively small bore of ca. 14 to 16 mm; in later times, and because their walls were thick enough, the bores were mostly enlarged up to ca. 20 mm.

Originally, they were attached to the stock just by means of a wood screw entering from above through the short barrel tang, and by a transversal wooden pin that went through a dovetailed loop at the underside of the barrel, just in front of the swamped forward section which was left unstocked.

Also, they originall were equipped with tubular rear sights that were in most cases put over two dovetailed short iron pins or feet; the top side of these feet was v-shaped for sighting, and the foresight was a small dovetailed iron bead.

The ramrod channel was drilled extending to the rear as far as about 5 to 10 cms, thus allowing the wooden ramrod to protrude not as as far as the forward section of the barrel. The idea was to prevent the ramrod from damage or breaking as the forestock ended in front of the swamped muzzle section und the ramrod would have remined unprotected.
The wooden ramrod was usually equipped with an iron finial at both ends, with the one at the rear threaded to receive a scourer or a worm (ball extractor).The latest of these barrels seem to have been made in ca. 1550/60; they look much more slender though and are notably longer.

I see more merit in backing up the threads made by Michael on a second server/database, this way we will never loose the thread like the Trade mark thread.

Salaams Marcus den toom That is a great point !! Indeed it would be a good move to protect these threads as they are the crown jewels of Forum. I would suggest doing that and also of hoisting the thread and several like it into the hall of fame status since they are absolutely superb examples...and may inspire others in research ... and as a tribute to the authors.

My suggestion would place these threads into a new proposed section as a tribute to those great authors ...in the time honoured way. They are not just classics but may be viewed as written by real masters of sword and pen as a tribute and as an inspiration much higher than mere classics...Classics have a place but so does representation in what I would call Forum Hall of Fame...It is a mark of respect.

I see more merit in backing up the threads made by Michael on a second server/database, this way we will never loose the thread like the Trade mark thread.

Despite our archival intentions and efforts, all content on the internet is actually pretty ephemeral. Just a change in the scripting language that is not adequately backward compatible could wipe access to the database in an instant. Members finding information of particular importance to themselves should save the pages to their own system as a safeguard.